This year, Petersburg’s Lady Vikings basketball teams didn’t win enough of their games this season to make it to the state tournament. But the Lady Vikings have come a long way since last year when they didn’t win a single one of their games. This year, they won four — including their first win at regionals in a few years.
KFSK’s Shelby Herbert takes a look back at the season with the Lady Vikings’ new coach, Matt Pawuk. He says the year went better than he ever could have expected.
Matt Pawuk …I mean, not that I had low expectations, but it was my first year as a head coach. There’s a lot more to head coaching than I thought there would be, but I learned a lot this year. And it was just really great to see the effort that the girls put in. I really couldn’t have asked for more effort and dedication from the kids. We had some success, we had some close games. Anytime you can win — as a senior — two games at home against Wrangell for homecoming, that’s pretty special. There were a lot of emotions in the locker room after our last game — myself, included. And I told the girls, ‘This is really what a good season should feel like when it ends.’ I mean, even if you win the state title, there should be some sadness just because the season is over. And that was really what I got from the girls is [that] they didn’t want to be done yet, which was pretty cool.
Shelby Herbert: Any favorite memories from this year?
MP: The two wins against Wrangell at home! Just getting that first win — that was a huge hurdle for us. Getting that first one at regionals was pretty awesome too. It was just hard to pick out just one fun memory — the whole season was great.
SH: So, from the court — where have you seen the Lady Vikings improve the most?
MP: I think playing together as a team was a huge part of our success this year, and just seeing that team chemistry grow. The attitudes are great, all season long. Even when we had intense moments. I told them at the beginning of season, ‘I’m going to ask you to do stuff that maybe you don’t think you can do, but I know that you can do them. I’ll never ask you to do something that you can’t do.’ And give us another two months in the season, we’d keep getting better and better and better.
SH: Matt, you and the team just got back from regionals. Can you run me through their last games?
MP: Yeah, so we had our opening round game against Craig. Craig, Wrangell, and us all had identical records in conference this year. So it came down to tiebreakers, and Wrangell was the three seed, Craig was the four seed, and we were the fifth seed. So, first round, we matched up against Craig. We got out to a seven-to nothing lead. We came out in the third quarter strong again, built up a bit of a lead, and then let Craig climb back into it by the end of the game. The final score of that one was 31-to-27, so yeah, good battle, first regional win for me as a coach and for a lot of those girls as players. But the unfortunate side effect of winning that first round game is that then you get matched up against the number one seed in the second round, and Metlakatla… they were extremely tough. It was like they couldn’t miss a shot. It was impressive. It’s unfortunate it had to happen against us, but they just came out incredibly hot, and we had trouble keeping pace with them. So we had another matchup with Craig. And I have to tip my hat a little bit to their coach, she made some adjustments that were tough for us to handle. They came out in the second half, and ran what’s called a box-and-one defense: they took their best defender and just put it on Anya Pawuk to take her out of the game. And then they created a box And we had a hard time getting into the flow of our offense there and they got the best of us.
SH: Looking ahead, you have some players graduating this year, so the team is about to look a lot different. What are your hopes for next year? Think we could make it to state?
MP: Yeah, I think so! I really liked the growth that I saw in my juniors this year, and there’s six of them. The JV players this year made a lot of good progress. We’ve got a strong group of incoming freshmen, so I’m optimistic for next season. I don’t see any reason for us to not have success next year or two. And hopefully I get to be a part of that!
SH: Well, Matt, I think that’s a great note to wrap up on here. Any final thoughts on the season?
MP: I felt lucky to get to work with them every day. They showed up for practice every day ready to go. Most practices, we’d get to eight o’clock and we would just run out of time — and the kids didn’t even want to go home yet! But then, it’s like, you gotta go do your homework! I will mention that Anya Pawuk and Adara Curtis, both were named to the All-Conference Team, which is pretty neat for us. Adara also got named to the Good Sport Award Team along with Cadence Lopez. And then we had two seniors named to the All-Academic Team — Anya Powick and Ali Thomason. It was just a real privilege to be able to coach that group.
